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Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs SharePoint comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

Microsoft Office SharePoint...
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
4.3
Number of Reviews
40
Ranking in other categories
Content Collaboration Platforms (5th)
SharePoint
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
166
Ranking in other categories
Enterprise Content Management (1st), Web Content Management (2nd), Corporate Portals (Enterprise Information Portals) (1st), Enterprise Intranet (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

While both are Messaging and Collaboration solutions, they serve different purposes. Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is designed for Content Collaboration Platforms and holds a mindshare of 3.3%, down 7.9% compared to last year.
SharePoint, on the other hand, focuses on Enterprise Content Management, holds 11.8% mindshare, down 16.2% since last year.
Content Collaboration Platforms Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
Microsoft Office SharePoint Server3.3%
Office 3658.6%
Google Workspace8.1%
Other80.0%
Content Collaboration Platforms
Enterprise Content Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
SharePoint11.8%
Alfresco7.1%
OpenText Content Management6.6%
Other74.5%
Enterprise Content Management
 

Featured Reviews

Daniel Giacomelli - PeerSpot reviewer
Security and Compliance at a outsourcing company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Has transformed how I manage documents through metadata and automation while enabling structured collaboration
Microsoft should restore some functionalities from older versions of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2003 and 2010. Specifically, bringing back something similar to SharePoint Designer would be beneficial. SharePoint Designer was both advantageous and challenging - developers found it limiting and preferred Visual Studio, while non-developers struggled to use it effectively. A new tool for configuring webpage design and development for content pages would be valuable. The current system is too basic. While integration of filtered lists and libraries is possible, it requires knowledge of Python or jQuery. A WYSIWYG editor would be preferable to requiring programming knowledge or Visual Studio.
Ravi Raushan Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Software Engineer at ValueMomentum
Centralized document governance has boosted collaboration and made knowledge sharing structured
SharePoint is a powerful platform, but there are a few areas where I think it could be improved, such as user experience. For new users, the interface and navigation can feel quite complex, specifically when working with multiple sites and document libraries. Another improvement would be search functionalities. While it is good sometimes, it does not always return the most relevant result unless a document is very well-structured and tagged. Also, initial setup and customizations can be time-consuming and may require technical expertise, specifically when configuring workflows or permissions. From a modern development perspective, tighter and more seamless integrations with tools including Power Automate and better support for custom backend integrations through APIs could make it more efficient. Overall, simplifying usability and enhancing search and integration capability would make SharePoint even stronger. One additional area I would appreciate improvement would be performance and responsiveness, especially when dealing with a large document library. Sometimes loading or navigating through large datasets can feel quite slow. Another aspect is permissions management. While it is very powerful, it can become complex to manage at scale, specifically when there are multiple levels of access across teams and projects. Improving developer experience would also be beneficial. Making customization, API integrations, and extensions more straightforward would help teams, especially backend developers, leverage SharePoint more efficiently.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It is a decent tool for collaboration, especially if you are already using other Office products."
"It's a very robust product."
"The most valuable aspect of the solution is the fact that it doesn't require coding. You just need to configure it. You don't need to code before getting something running. It makes it very fast."
"The solution is scalable, and you can do both horizontal and vertical scaling."
"The most valuable feature of the product is that it's robust and you can access many features from Microsoft, such as Exchange, through SharePoint."
"If you choose the cloud, the most valuable aspect of the solution is the fact that it doesn't require coding."
"Enhanced user access management features fully integrated with Active Directory allowed us to gain the trust of the users and they use SharePoint to store and share all company digital content created by them."
"Because of the integration of documents stored in SharePoint to be edited by any of the Office Suite products, that overpowers and is a greater good than what DocuShare brought to the company."
"SharePoint’s most valuable feature is its use for community building, as it turns large scores of people into a more cohesive group by creating a central working environment for documents, conversations, knowledge sharing, processes, tasks and content."
"This solution has helped us with the categorization, organization, management, discovery, and delivery of program and project related information."
"SharePoint has made things easier with the increased functionality for building the portals, microsites, and total integration with Microsoft categories."
"It has improved our productivity to a great extent with its great collaboration features."
"The solution has helped host our intranet and thereby helped in content publishing and distribution."
"SharePoint is the ideal platform in the collaboration scenario where it is quite easy to set up document repositories with appropriate permissions with just a few mouse clicks."
"It has made us faster and more efficient."
"Staff training is reduced because learning basic SharePoint is not as complicated as an EDRMS."
 

Cons

"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server is more accessible for the average user, but it lacks certain features that more advanced users would look for, making it seem unnecessarily complicated to do simple things or things one expects to be simple."
"The user interface needs improvement because there is a lot of stuff in there."
"I would like to see the integration with Teams reinforced."
"The product is behind in development and lacks some features."
"I would rate my experience with Microsoft technical support as sometimes frustrating because of the time it takes for the Microsoft team to react to their particular case."
"The UIs are really clunky and Microsoft needs to fix that."
"One of the reasons why we don't recommend the cloud version of SharePoint is the cost."
"The Branding and User Interface Design and CK Editor should be improved, as well as the upgrade process."
"While this workflow operating system is better than others on the market, it is uncomfortable and expensive to really implement what you need."
"SharePoint is not always intuitive to use and can be overwhelming for non-tech-savvy users."
"There's room for improvement in the search functionality, although it has matured significantly over the years."
"For sure, it should offer customisation of data grids, which is not possible, as it seems to use some proprietary OCX control."
"It does not integrate despite being part of the Microsoft family."
"The company also needs to make sure that their policies are dictating how information is stored and used, instead of letting SharePoint take control."
"Unless you have worked with a SharePoint business analyst, designer or power user, managing individual sites does require training to understand the components of the site settings and content."
"The initial setup process is not intuitive."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It can be expensive for on-premises deployments, especially when you have to support SQL Server as your backend database. That's where the cost comes into play. SQL Server has its own licensing, which Microsoft keeps on changing. Therefore, it can become costly. In the earlier versions of SharePoint, version 2007 or 2010, they had an express version where the SQL Server licensing was free. It wasn't like a full-blown SharePoint. It was only a slimmed-down version. It used to be whatever your hardware costs. You would install the free software and work with it, but you were very limited in what you could do in SharePoint. If you wanted the SharePoint Enterprise Server with all the bells and whistles, then you had to pay more to get the SQL Server license based on the number of users or servers. The subscription model is different for cloud deployments. Licensing is per user and per month. The cost also depends on the storage required. If you have a lot of sites or documents, then you need to expand it based on your needs."
"One of the reasons why we don't recommend the cloud version of SharePoint is the cost. With the on premise version, you pay for the license once. For the cloud version, there is a recurring fee. It is very expensive. They expect everyone to pay $20 or $30 per user per month."
"Pricing plans may be flexible depending on volume usage and your corporate relationship with Microsoft."
"There are some aggressive discounts offered by Microsoft for organizations that are not for profit, which we are, and it makes it quite attractive to consider."
"The pricing is competitive."
"The licensing model for SharePoint Online is based on per user, and it is monthly. The price of the solution overall is good."
"SharePoint is included with our Microsoft license."
"The replacement costs for it are cheaper if you use only SharePoint."
"As usual, Microsoft’s licensing structures don’t really seem to fit the needs of their products. This leads to always paying for a project you will never use fully or always be adding to."
"The platform has medium pricing."
"It is very expensive.​"
"Any extended support from Microsoft is expensive."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Content Collaboration Platforms solutions are best for your needs.
893,915 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Comparison Review

it_user8925 - PeerSpot reviewer
Developer with 51-200 employees
Aug 23, 2013
Jive vs Sharepoint vs Drupal Commons
At Mediacurrent we often get requests to compare Drupal to other platforms used for intranet sites and social business platforms (like https://dev.twitter.com/ for example). This is often referred to as “Social Business Software”, which has grown in popularity in recent years. I decided to do a…
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Comms Service Provider
9%
Computer Software Company
9%
Financial Services Firm
9%
Marketing Services Firm
8%
Government
11%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Construction Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business13
Midsize Enterprise13
Large Enterprise17
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business80
Midsize Enterprise40
Large Enterprise83
 

Questions from the Community

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
I am not aware of the pricing, so I cannot say if the solution is expensive or quite affordable.
What needs improvement with Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
My expectation when I start using a Microsoft product is that it would be easy to incorporate diagrams and such from other Microsoft Office products. Incorporating a diagram I've embedded in a slid...
What is your primary use case for Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?
I produce content about the work I'm doing inside the company, making information about IT architecture, work processes within IT architecture, and security reviews of applications or infrastructur...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for SharePoint?
I do not know the difference between the prices of the two solutions; I did not work on this project.
What needs improvement with SharePoint?
SharePoint is a powerful platform, but there are a few areas where I think it could be improved, such as user experience. For new users, the interface and navigation can feel quite complex, specifi...
What is your primary use case for SharePoint?
My main use case for SharePoint is storing data, and it has primarily served as our document management and team collaboration platform. I have used it to organize and share documents, manage versi...
 

Also Known As

Office SharePoint Server, MS Office SharePoint Server
SharePoint 2007, SharePoint 2010
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Del Monte Foods, Unicredit Leasing, Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council, Nokia Czech Republic, Perkins Eastman, JLL, ICA, óxito Software, Dorset Software, PKP Cargo, Arcapita Bank B.S.C., AVE CZ, Chesapeake Energy
Toyota, Aeroports de Paris, ASBBank Ltd., Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals, CambridgeshireConstabulary, D&M Group, NPL Construction Company, and The Regional Municipality of Niagara.
Find out what your peers are saying about Microsoft Office SharePoint Server vs. SharePoint and other solutions. Updated: March 2020.
893,915 professionals have used our research since 2012.